One of the most important lessons I’ve learned as a product manager is that nothing replaces being onsite with your customers. You can pore over research, surveys, and product feedback. You can talk to colleagues and study market reports. But until you stand inside a customer’s environment and watch them work, you don’t fully understand how your product operates in the real world.
Every time I get out of the office and into the field, I walk away with insights that would never surface in a conference room or spreadsheet.
The Limits of the “Walled Castle”
It’s easy for product managers to get stuck in what I call the “walled castle.” You sit at your desk, review specs, host meetings, and convince yourself you know exactly what’s happening in the market. But from inside that castle, you’re removed from the noise, distractions, and realities of your customers’ daily lives.
If you stay locked away, you’re not approachable. And while you need to be the biggest evangelist for your product, you can’t truly evangelize it unless you understand how it actually impacts your customers. That understanding lives in the field.
What You See in the Field That You Miss in the Office
A few examples. We implemented a Wi-Fi solution at a smaller outdoor sports stadium. On paper, the survey looked great. Coverage was clean. Interference was accounted for. Everything suggested the network would work fine.
But once thousands of fans filled the stadium, the story changed. People absorb Wi-Fi signals, and what seemed reliable in testing became congested and unstable in practice. It was only by standing in the stadium that we saw how people in motion disrupted the network and how temporary concession vendors’ Point of Sale devices struggled with interference, reverting to the already crowded 2.4 GHz spectrum.
The same thing happens in everyday places like supermarkets. From the outside, it looks like a typical retail space. Walk through it, though, and you’ll find unique issues.
One day, I visited a supermarket that was a potential customer. In just a simple five-minute walkthrough, I discovered a misconfigured access point from their existing provider, no guest Wi-Fi in the store, no cell signal in most areas, employees conducting wireless inventory checks, and more. Each of these instances became a talking point we now use in sales training to show how to spot problems a potential customer may not realize exist. And identifying these problems ultimately increases the chance of closing the deal.
These lessons don’t come from lab tests or surveys. They come from standing in the space, watching how people move, and experiencing it the way customers do.
Why Presence Builds Trust
There’s another benefit to being onsite that goes beyond technical insight. Customers open up when they’re in their own environment.
Invite customers to an advisory board, and many will hold back. They don’t want to tip their hand to competitors or risk looking uninformed. In their own environment, though, they relax. You see how they interact with employees, handle challenges, and respond to problems in real time. Conversations become more candid, and the trust you earn pays off later.
That trust is not only valuable with customers, it becomes a powerful tool when you return to your team. Sharing firsthand stories about challenges business owners face makes you more relatable than quoting statistics.
When you show up and take the time to see the customer’s world, you’re not just another vendor. You become a partner who sees their reality firsthand.
Turning Observations Into Action
Field insights provide the raw material for better decisions.
Watching phones take hours to update on a weak Wi-Fi connection led us to pre-stage devices before shipping. Spotting a misconfigured access point in a store reminded us to improve monitoring processes so we could alert customers before they noticed outages.
Even casual interactions add value. A quick chat with a florist about managing seasonal rushes might spark ideas that apply across industries. Every observation is a data point, and together they shape how you approach problems and solutions.
For product managers, these observations are also fuel for prioritization. When you see a customer workaround in action, that’s evidence the issue deserves more weight in your backlog. It gives you stories to share with engineers, designers, and executives that make the need impossible to ignore.
Advice for Other Product Managers
If you’re a product manager, my advice is simple: get into the field as often as you can.
This doesn’t always require a big travel budget. Start small. Add an extra day to a business trip and visit local customers. Walk through environments similar to your target market, even if they aren’t customers yet. Pay attention in your daily life at restaurants, the gym, or retail stores. Take notice of how technology succeeds or fails around you.
Every one of those moments contributes to a clearer picture of reality.
Closing Reflection
When I think about the projects that succeeded most, they all had one thing in common: someone took the time to stand where the customer stands. That extra effort uncovered problems earlier, built stronger relationships, and created products that worked better in the real world.
The moments that keep me motivated as a product manager are the ones where the picture clicks into place. You see how people actually use your product and realize the small changes that can make a huge difference. That clarity only comes from being there.
About Our Guest Author
Randy Ford has a long history within the information technology world with spending his first 25 years with roles in fulfillment, health care, real estate, and more. He transitioned to product roles in a business to business environment and has spent the last 13 years as a product manager, engineer, developer, owner, etc. He currently leads a successful team as a Director of Product Management offering services within the network service provider industry with a focus on delivering exceptional customer experiences from small business to large enterprise.
